Tears Dry on Their Own
by Prosper-the-XVIII
Summary: One-shot sequel to Scars Don't Fade. After all she's suffered through, James worries about Evelyn constantly. But now he has no idea who or where she is. However, she may be a lot closer than he thinks...00M, Skyfall spoilers.


**Spoilers for Skyfall, by the way. However, as I really don't think that M deserved death in the slightest, it never happened. Read my fic 'Scars Don't Fade' before this one. For all Bond/M shippers out there and especially RebaForever15 because, let's face it, she's just awesome like that :) My attempt at as close to a really hot fic as I'm going to ever try and get. Don't ask why I found Read All About It by Emeli Sande so relevant to this fic, I just did**

* * *

_I wanna sing,  
_I_ wanna shout,  
I wanna scream 'till the words dry out,  
So put it in all of the papers,  
I'm not afraid,  
They can read all about it..._

_-Emeli Sande_

* * *

_Three days after M's final flashback in Scars Don't Fade_

"James, you're sentimental about her," M said, staring across his desk at the young 00 in front of him. "Don't try and protect your ego by denying it. We both saw you at the hospital."

"M, can we leave my feelings towards Evelyn out of the equation and just get on with the bollocking you had planned? I did what I was sent out to do; I admit I was worried about her, but you can't exactly call that 'sentimentality'. She'd been tortured, she was dying; hell, she went completely flat-line for most of a minute. If she had died, I never would have forgiven myself. Of course I was worried about her."

"James, that's the thing. You went above and beyond call of duty, and not in the good way. I think that there are far too many agents or specifically double ohs who are hellbent on killing off our every lead on cases such as this, and you're one of them. You don't know when to stop."

"But I rescued Evelyn. I didn't leave an abnormally large trail of destruction behind me like I usually do. Q got the car given back to him in one piece-"

"First time for everything," James heard M snort. He just ignored him and continued.

"Nothing went balls-up like I thought it would. I did what you sent me to," James scowled. It was amazing how fast a debriefing with M could turn into him getting his ass handed to him for some pretty stupid stuff. "And explain the killing bit, please."

"James, you may not see it that way because what you were told to do was done for once, but Evelyn's life came at too high a cost. That woman you ran over, do you remember what she looked like? I've managed to get a name and stuff out of Evelyn, but she's got no clear recollection of how this woman actually looked."

"Okay..." An expression of deep thought searching etched James's face as he tried to remember what the woman had looked like. "Right, she had braided black hair, broken nose that kind of angled to the right, blue-black eyes - no, just one of her eyes. I think she'd damaged the other somehow, because it was completely white, and she had this little scar that split her eyelid a bit, then a big one kind of diagonally down her face. That...that's all I can remember."

"Okay, I was right to think that this woman was who I was under the impression she was." The screen behind a panel of wood in M's wall was revealed, he tapped something into his computer and a CIA file appeared on the screen, bearing an image of the woman who had tortured Evelyn. "As well as two others, you killed this woman. Her name was Camille Rosé Delacour. She was an ex CIA operative who double-crossed the agency in the late seventies, so they betrayed her and she ended up being tortured. We don't know how she wound up leading a French drugs group, but she was wanted for questioning in seven countries, this one included, and on death row in another four. I told you not to kill anyone unless totally necessary. And as per usual, you ignored all my instructions. Don't think for a second that I'm doing this because I want to, but I'm revoking your licence to kill. I must admit, this mission has potentially been the biggest cock-up I have ever come across, because not only have I lost a 00, but one of my best agents outside your division."

"What, don't tell me that after all the shit she's been through, you've-" James couldn't remember the last time he had her been this pissed off with anyone in his entire life. Loosing his 00 hurt badly enough, but he had been constantly stressing about Evelyn recently, and now finding out about this was an enormous slap in the face. M nodded slowly.

"I'm afraid so. Physical and psychological tests tell me that she's completely lost her killer instinct; she shows a reluctance to kill or cause serious injury even when threatened with the same fate herself, she has the inability to defend herself and psychological testing has told us that she suffers from deep mental scarring that, like the physical ones to her limbs, are probably never going to fade. Also, we reckon that she'd completely fall to pieces in a torture situation. I've not fired her or anything; she's taking on the role of my personal assistant, but I doubt that she's stand a chance alone in the field, and I don't think that it would be that good an idea to send someone else with her whenever she went on a mission. That would just put two agents at risk instead of one if something were to wrong and turn into a repeat of the Rene mission. So, I think you may feel the same way as me when I say that it was best just to let her go."

* * *

_Twenty-one years later, M's apartment, London_

"James, do you honestly have to do that?" M looked up from the well-thumbed copy of 50 Shades of Grey she had been reading at James, who was standing in a pile of what had been the contents of her underwear drawer with a bra that seemed to have picked up his attention hooked around his little finger.

"M, I really never had you down as someone who would wear this," he struggled to hook the garment, which was a purple silk balcony number adorned with black lace and tiny pearlescent studs, around himself, ignoring the eye rolls he was receiving from M.

"James, if you're bored, just talk to me. You don't have to rake through my knicker drawer and play dress-up." In response, James picked up two pairs of balled-up tights, rammed them down into the silk cups of possibly the most embarrassing item of clothing M owned (save for what went with it; she hoped to god that he didn't find that because she would never hear the end of it, plus she really didn't want to see him wearing it,) pulling his discarded dress shirt over the top. He paraded around the room for a bit in nothing more than the shirt and his own boxer shorts, flaunting his newly acquired breasts, until M stood up, scowling. "James. Take it off. Now."

James looked at the floor, muttering; "Yes, ma'am," and M, seemingly satisfied, went and sat down again, picking at a bit of fluff stuck to the red silk sleeve of her pajama jacket.

"Okay, James, if you're quite finished; three am. Sleep." M slipped under the sheets, maybe stifling a little moan, and James seemed prepared to do the same, until something caught his eye. "M, M, M, you naughty girl! What on earth is this?" M scowled, stood up again and tried to snatch the last reminder of her days as...well, a female James Bond from him.

"Give that here! I'm warning you!" All James had to do to stop her from getting to it was hold it at arm's length above his head. "James, please, just stop messing about with my knickers and get to sleep."

"M, _this _is not 'knickers'. _This _is basically a necklace with a bit of lace attached to it. You just happen to wear it somewhere else entirely."

M sighed, her face clearly wrought with embarrassment. "The last thing I want is you wearing that as well, can you please try and show some restraint?" Probably by way of annoying her, James settled for putting the thong on his head. She looked at him, all too clearly unimpressed, and he swore under his breath as he took it off and put it into her outstretched hand. She opened and closed her fingers quickly a few times, obviously meaning that he had something else she wanted. The bra was placed in her hand as well.

"Thank you. Look, the pair of us are going to be like zombies tomorrow unless we get some sleep."

"M, one thing. I'm going to be up all night on this unless you tell me. I mean, I've accepted now that you're the only woman for me and I think you've at least come to terms with it, so how come this is literally the least I ever see you wearing?" James gestured to her at the moment; even whilst asleep, M still always wore long sleeves, and he literally had no idea. He saw a veil of sadness and maybe a little hurt cloud her face.

"I could make myself look like a complete old fart and say that it's maintaining my dignity, but I'm not going to. If you really have to know, I'll show you. Do you mind leaving the room for a few minutes?" As James began to walk out, still holding M's ridiculously sexy yet incredibly out of character underwear, she said quietly; "Leave that here."

* * *

James stood outside M's room, wondering what on earth she was doing in there and contemplating all the women he'd been with over the years. Thinking in reverse order, there was a train of names ringing in his head. Severine...Camille...Fields...Vesper - god, it still hurt to so much as think about her - all the way back to the first he had...well, their relationship was is and always would be simply imaginary. Evelyn. He couldn't remember her last name - he generally never did - but she really stuck in her mind because she was possibly the only one who had had a name that people actually have - seriously, what kind of nutcase names their kid _Strawberry_? - and she had been the only one whose life he had saved and not had something to do with ending. He didn't know who or where she was, or even if she was still alive, but he would happily have killed to find out. Okay, that wasn't exactly a metaphor he and his licence to kill were in a position to use, but still. Okay, she may have been old enough to be his mother, but then so was his current love interest, and he may have only met her properly once or twice (her being half-conscious in the back of a car didn't exactly count as meeting in his eyes) but she was still a constant face that turned up in his dreams...especially the ones about Vesper for some unknown reason.

"James, if you really must, you can come back in," M's voice slapped him from his train of thought, but then reminded him of now. And that now was oddly exciting...

* * *

M was lying face-down in the center of her bed, wearing nothing more than the purple silk lingerie that she had been so uneasy about earlier, black patent high heels, the suit jacket she had had on earlier and something like six strings of pearls draped around her neck. She had Emeli Sande playing softly from the docking station on her bedside table and her expression was far from natural. Any other woman and this would've looked just plain slutty, but it was M and she was just bloody stunning. James was sure that the look on his face was pretty idiotic, but let's face it, his eyeballs were practically falling out of his head. "God, I reckon _The Sun_ would kill for a photo of that."

"Thank you, James, but I'm pretty sure that once I've shown you this, you're going to think me far from Page Three Girl." M pulled herself into a sitting position, and slipped the jacket from around her shoulders.

'_You've got the words to change a nation_  
_But you're biting your tongue_  
_You've spent a life time stuck in silence_  
_Afraid you'll say something wrong_  
_If no one ever hears it how we gonna learn your song?_  
_So come on, come on_  
_Come on, come on_  
_You've got a heart as loud as lions_  
_So why let your voice be tamed?_  
_Baby we're a little different_  
_There's no need to be ashamed_  
_You've got the light to fight the shadows_  
_So stop hiding it away_  
_Come on, Come on, Come on...'_

It took James a little while to adjust to seeing so much of M, and then afterwards his eyes drew automatically to the long, deep scar on her hip from Skyfall. He sat beside her and ran his hand up it softly. "I still can't believe he did that to you."

M smiled weakly. "Well, I'm fine now, James. And if you've got to stand gawping at me, could you hurry up about it? I know that it's kind of the point, but I hate the way this thing rides up into the crack of your arse."

James stroked her hand, and began running his own up her arm, but when his hand met a series of soft, raised lumps in her skin, he stopped and stared at her. The masses of surgical or bulletwound scars criss-crossing her arms shocked him a little at first, but when the picture of a woman lying bleeding in the back of his first Aston martin formed in his mind, he looked at her face and took in every curve and line of every little feature. He knew it all, and now he had no idea how he had never worked it out before. Evelyn...

"That...that was you?" He continued to trace every pale, delicate line of her scars with his fingertip, remembering the expression of pain her heart-shaped face had worn all those years ago in France, then a matter of months previously in the Skyfall chapel. "God, Evelyn, I've wanted to know who you were for all these years...I can't believe I never noticed..."

"I can't either," M sighed, and James noticed the tears in her eyes. "I wasn't embarrassed about you seeing my scars; I knew you'd be fine about it, but it hurts to remember..." She lay back, and James did the same, brushing a glassy tear from her cheek. "Whenever I think about it...It's like I'm bleeding and I just can't get it to stop..."

Her hands were covering her face now, and James watched her shake as she sobbed. He put his arms around her, running a sliding kiss up one of hers. It hurt for him now too; he was thinking about those few minutes in the shower with Vesper, but he continued to speak the words he had said to her then. "Better now?"

She nodded, looking up and staring at her arms. James hated seeing the woman he loved like this; her pain was the kind that it was impossible for him to do anything about. Her predecessor had been right when he had said that neither her physical or mental scars would never fade. She wasn't finished speaking, though. "And it...it's why my husband left me. There was a lot of damage done to my legs as well, as you know; I was in a wheelchair for about six months, my arms were full of stitches for weeks afterwards and I kept having really bad nightmares for years and still do on occasion, and he had no idea how to deal with it. I thought that it scared him or that he didn't like thinking about the pain that I'd been through, but unfeeling bastard he was, he told me that it was because he hated MI6 and what we do on the night that he walked out, and me having all these just reminded him every time he looked at me. He told me...he told me that no man could ever want me because of it, and until now I believed him. That's why I was so reluctant to accept us together..."

James smiled a little, holding her close. "Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, huh? I can't believe he did that to you; I don't blame you for not wanting to be with me in the first place. M - Evelyn - you're beautiful inside and out, and nothing can ever change that. Good riddance to bad rubbish is what I'd say.

M gave a slight nod, folding her arms over her chest and breathing a heavy sigh. "Good riddance to bad rubbish," she agreed. "But I didn't want to tell you as well because of what thinking about it does to me. I literally never sleep for a few days afterwards...God, I must sound so self-absorbed, but just how much it all _hurt..._and on the inside, too, not just getting shot."

James held her to his chest, gently caressing her skin with his hands and whispering into her hair. "You're okay. I've got you..."

* * *

_'Yeah, we're all wonderful, wonderful people_  
_So when did we all get so fearful?_  
_Now we're finally finding our voices_  
_So take a chance, come help me sing this_  
_Yeah, we're all wonderful, wonderful people_  
_So when did we all get so fearful?_  
_And now we're finally finding our voices_  
_So take a chance, come help me sing this,_

_I__wanna sing,  
_I_ wanna shout,  
I wanna scream 'till the words dry out,  
So put it in all of the papers,  
I'm not afraid,  
They can read all about it...'_


End file.
